>> you can watch this and the programs on line at booktv.org. now eric larsen talks about the debate over social security and argues that in order to preserve the decades of support system it may be necessary to remove it from control of federal government. this program is an hour. [applause] >> can everyone hear me all right? of gary. first of all, i just want to say, it's a pleasure to be introduced by roger. roger and the campaign for america's future are among the heroes of the book the room. they stepped in and have been absolutely instrumental in organizing a position at key moments of the past 30 years, especially since the mid-19th when social security has been turned.

they worked tirelessly. it's arguable that we would not have social security today in the form that we do if it wasn't for their effort. it is really great to be introduced by somebody who has played such a positive le in all this. i had written a book which i told this along broke. and so the question arises, why did i spend my time doing this. i want to talk about why wrote this book and a little bit about some of the findings that i gleaned from that, what has happened to push a -- put social security in the position it's in? highly popular among working people. why is it so hated among segments of the washington elite? this is a question i started asking myself back in the mid

90's when i was editing a magazine called plan sponsor. that was a time when the movement to privatize social security was first getting going in a major way. polls before congress. it looked like something like that was almost inevitable. of course something like that would have affected employers pretty directly. i am very interested. want to find out what the political dynamic was, by we found ourselves in this place. the first thing and it is look around for a boat and will explain it to me. i couldn't find one. there was none that told a political history of what happened to social security. and so i got sucked in and realized a better just write the book myself. that was the first reason i want to write this book. the second was that as i got into the research and started to

explore the origins been before reagan, before fdr, the indians, the basic ideas and philosophies behind social insurance programs going back to working class people providing for each of it neatly. again very interested because it seems to me to be a way to start thinking creatively about security, to start thinking upon what we want from this program and the kind of economy we have today to bunt off from the point of view of dismantling it, but from figuring out the next step. the third reason i brought this boat, and it became more and more important as i continue to do about was quite personal. today i find myself very much in this in place that an awful lot of americans in and have been working all their lives and

self-employed. i have an ira. it took a battering in 2000. actually, dot, and telecom. in 2008 when the housing bubble collapsed. my health insurance costs is going up. the value of my home, home equity has gone down. i don't have a pension plan. the work i do it's harder to come by, and it doesn't pay as well as it used to. millions of americans are in the spotlight this. when i get that statement that the social security administration sends around every year the tells you how much you could collect at this point if you retired in 67.

i am going to be much more reliant on social security and retirement. an awful lot of americans who are more or less my age or will all there are thinking exactly the same thing at this moment. that was the highly personal motivation i was one of the people i was writing about, quick literally. that's where i decided to do this book. again, the question that arose was how we got into the situation, how we got to win this program has been so relentlessly under attack. my research has claimed what i like to think of as that tend

transformations that have happened in american politics. it explains a lot of this. you have to read the book to get more detailed. the first transformation is the biggest. that centers on one thing at in tech and blow into one word with his taxes. what am i talking about? well, the way and look at it, to political realities in america that affect social security. there is what i call the reality for the 99% and 1%. the reality for the 99% is much like what i just described in terms of myself. there is in retirement crisis brewing. it has to do with the fact that

most of the other support for retirement, people have relied on traditionally for decades have been knocked out from under them. pensions and disappearing. home-equity, traditionally a major source of retirement income and wealth for working-class people is down and pau would never going to get back up to levels of was during the bull. health insurance cost growing and growing. at the same time all the workers are confronted with the fact that their children are having a harder and harder time getting established in the working world . burdened with student debt, more and more people who are in their 40's, 50's's, and sixties are having to help out their children who are trying to get started. all of this mitigates against having wealth and retirement of it and what you are able to the

her in through social security. this program is becoming more and more vital for the people that needed the most. it will become even more so for people in the '20s, '30s, and 40 today. what is the reality for the 1%? the reagan administration, the most affluent people in this society have been able to create a very, very favorable tax regime for themselves, low tax rates, marginal tax rate for high earners, low capital gain dividend taxes, those being the primary vehicles for building well. the tax system that is riddled with loopholes. taxes were riddled with

loopholes, so you have a very favorable tax system. any loss of 1% to build a massive blow for themselves over the past 30 and 35 years. the overriding concern, the overriding motive in political action for the 1 percent today, up would boil down to maintain and extend this low tax regime. to do that involves something -- it involves basically, among other things, reducing will we refer to as the social wage. the social wage is the part of what he did. everything from social security to medicare to unemployment insurance to disability, all the things the you get that help keep you going throughout your career.

reducing the social wage has been a goal of the 1% for a decade now. one of the most important aspects of that is to reduce and dismantle social security and medicare. the united states has an aging population. there will be more retired people, more elderly people in decades to come. this is something that is of concern to people. unless they can figure out a way to shift the cost of paying for retirement and paying for the things that of the people need in old age from government to house all the and inevitably there will be pressure to raise taxes. we have seen them one of the major ways it being looked at a press to papers of security in years to come is to raise the cap on wages that i sent it

apparel tax. that amounts to a tax hike from more affluent people. there is nothing unfair about it, nothing an affordable about a, and nothing outrageous about it. this is a harbinger. if you're a member of the 1%, will happen more and more frequently in coming decades if you're not able to dismantle or cut back severely on social security and medicare. there will be more and more pressure to raise taxes. so one of the things you want to do if you are more affluent person is not want to figure out a way to dismantle, privatize, cut back social security and medicare so that those pressures to raise taxes will not materialize. as the first pressure that i'm talking about on social security system. 99 percent that need social security more than ever but

can't afford to shoulder the increased burden of the next few decades. we have a much smaller 1% that can afford to pick up more of that burden but doesn't want to. the second group is powerful politically, it has become much, much more powerful in recent decades. the first group, the 99% can be very powerful when it gets its act together. some batters the first transformative thing that happened over the past 30 years. the others don't take quite as long to explain. i'll run through them. changes in the electoral environment. one of the things that has helped social security in past decades is the fact that there has been a lot of people in congress who have a very tight connection with social security. harry reid and nancy pelosi who are the minority leader in the

house and senate have tight personal connections with social security. there are also among the oldest members of congress today. the reality is that in congress increasingly in order to get elected to have to have a lot of money or be adept at fund-raising. democrats have cultivated some very large fund-raisers who tend to have tight connections with the financial-services industry. they tend to have these same concerns overtaxes the people on the right to. increasingly, the people who make up the democratic center right her part of this generation that has become very adept at fund-raising but does not have a tight connection with programs like social security in more. there's a problem in terms of

the leaders. another problem is changes in the financial system. believe in and on wall street was actually not very interested in privatizing social security until the mid 90's. many because they could not understand how they would cope with millions and millions of small investment accounts that could be generated by a privatized social security system. that started to change and austria started to play a much larger role in social security and the mid-90s. a story that we saw for the first time in the people's pension. most trees started to spend a tremendous amount of money on technology, computer systems , partly because of the sophisticated trading strategies that were starting to take root. program trades that require

tremendous computing power to develop and then execute. at the same time, the retirement market was burgeoning in mutual fund companies were finding that they needed computer systems to administer and keep records for an honest numbers of retirement accounts. by the mid-90s what you found a small street not only was beginning to have the capacity to handle my numbers of private accounts from sucking like social security, would they had a very strong motivation to do so. those private accounts would generate fees which would provide a cushion with a high risk trading business that was generating more and more of wall street's profits. all the sudden will street became keenly interested in privatizing social security. in the mid-90s we started to see proposals to privatize social security getting major, major support from wall street.

since then and has been possible to put pressure on wall street, to back off from some of this because some of their clients include public pension funds and union pension funds that opposed privatizing social security. increasingly they've taken the position that this is the future. social security, investing the managing, the future of wall street, to be able to sustain the other part of this business which is this high risk trading which got us into trouble in 2008 and continues. walker it does not want to relinquish a -- request that. it wants to be able to support it. the result is that we have wall street teaming up to cut back of security. another problem is the economic profession itself restricted to the right. one of the names that came up over and over is martin feldstein and ran a think tank

until fairly recently, national bureau of economic research, one of the premier finishing schools for mainstream economists and has been for a long time. a tremendous amount of research started to take place on ways to privatize social security or ways to restructure some security. it became an incubator of ideas. more and more academic economists make the money by consulting with wall street. and so you have a kind of symbiosis between of wall street push for privatization and the mainstream economic profession. right wing think tanks have the 80's in privatizing social security or pushing for dismantling of social security. and in my book and document three stages of this process.

right wing think tanks concentrated on convincing the washington elites that social security needed to be dismantled , social security was in trouble and was financially unsustainable. of work that they did resulted in the conversion of a lot of people within the democratic party to this line as something we have to cut back. in the 90's with the kings actually stumbled. they tried to carry this message and privatization to the general public. mainstream working people that social security was abandoned it to be compact. they need to fund a stumble very badly in doing that, particularly in 2005 and the gap behind george bush when he went out on the road to self privatization for the american people in congress. the think tank and he shifted

back to working with in washington, inside baseball with of the washington elite to figure out ways that social security can be cut back and maybe even privatized without anybody leaving any fingerprints and sort of idea that we can do this if we jump off the cliff together. bring the center right and the right wing of republican party together to make major changes in social security is a kind of meeting dance that has been going on throughout the time i write about and has become intensified ever since 2006 when the bush attempt to sell social security privatization crashed and burned. we have stages in this process that have gone. another player in this sort of transformation that i document in the past 30 years is the washington media. for reasons which i explained in the book, the washington press

corps is a -- the of the of the national media in this country that has been drawn toward the center right. it in to take their cues to lead as the group of people has moved more toward being critical , the national media has moved in the same direction. it is much, much more difficult to be taken seriously in the "washington post," the new york times, the more influential portions of the national media if you're a critic of social security than if your defender of it. there has been a sort of some bias is between the financial sector, the national press, and the washington policy-making elite with the washington media have turned into a megaphone for critics of social security.

that is the other portion of this, the national media. another factor, i guess the seams of social security data describing my book has been contributed by the program itself in an unwitting way. social security is a hugely, hugely successful program that has brought down levels of poverty among the elderly in this country to among the lowest levels in the industrialized world. in this country 40 years ago, 50 years ago they used to be among the highest. social security is a huge success along with medicare in accomplishing this. but in the current political environment social security has a drawback which is, it is not a particularly democratic program. social security is run by a professional of minister. decision making is congress, the

trustees of the social security program are appointed by the president. as a result there is what you might call it is additional distance between social security and the people who effectively and it which is working people and pay into the program and receive benefits at the same time they're invested in treasury bonds. treasury bonds on the most secure investment you can have. perfectly safe. on the other hand there is not a lot of understanding how that system works. persistent rumors which you hear over and over again that social security as not really been invested. it has been ripped off and replaced. there is a kind of lack of understanding of how the system works. at the same time what is done with treasury bonds, basically

invested in whenever gourmandise . so this sort of a lack of understanding of what social security is made up of, with the economic system is that it is part of. and a sort of a feeling the social security is money that i p.m. and money that comes out, but i don't know what happens in between. so there's a kind of a sense that social security is something the we don't understand. one of the things -- one of the ideas or some of the head is that have come up in relation to this in recent years have been to take the money that is in the treasury and invest in, perhaps, sustainable economic project that could produce revenues that could be used to pay benefits. this is the kind of a way out idea for a lot of people in washington today, but it is actually something that was on the minds of some of the people

who founded social security back in its early days. the first commissioner of food security in the 1930's talked about investing the trust fund. when the idea came up, what are we investing in? what do we do with it? he suggested that, perhaps, the funds could be invested in the social undertakings such as low-cost housing, schools, hospitals and even in manufacturing but could be justified from the point of view of social offset. interesting phrase. manufacturing that could be justified from the point of view of social welfare. so investing in its of security in treasury bonds was not always the only thing the people fought can be done but. of the past three decades, it has become very difficult to think of it for security in creative ways.

what do we do who want to take it to the next steps? what we want from social security? kind of lessons and once and for security has become, frozen in time. benefits, the benefits of surface security provides have not been improved in any material way for decades now, not since indexed to inflation. among other things, social security does not do a very good job for surviving spouses. does not necessarily to a very good job for divorced spouses. social security does not supply benefits for some sex couples. social security benefits are actually among the stingiest in the industrialized world, and it does not provide an adequate minimum benefit for people who work their entire lives in low-wage jobs command of a

larger and larger portion of the workforce today. a lot of ways in which social security needs to be improved, but it is it difficult thing to talk about. the final thing is the lack of a consistent social movement. this gets back partly to this sort of lack of something positive to organize around. social security today and the story that i tell in my book goes into this. the real heroes are groups like campaign for america's future, the national committee to preserve social security and medicare, the alliance for retired americans, other groups, that has ravaged consistently. whatever shall security is attacked, rallied consistently to make sure the program is not scuttled, dismantle.

the campaign comes together. it's interesting. when they do they recreate the new deal coalition. every few years with social security is attacked we see the new deal coalition that everybody seems to think disappeared with reagan recreated and reborn again and again. it is an amazing thing that keeps happening. what is needed is a consistent social movement that stays active even in times when social security is not being attacked. the group that i mentioned to avert a sharp eye on what happens in washington. one of the reasons that we need to start thinking creatively about social security again is because that could be the genesis of the social movement that is active and involved all the time and that encourages people to think about social security as more than just something that needs to be defended, something we need to play defense around all the time that is a problem. the positives, lot of positive things of social security has

going for it today. first of all, there is the fact that we can afford social security as society. i will go into huge detail about this. you can ask questions of me after work, but we hear a lot about social security being an unsustainable. i'll throw out a set of numbers that i think you're worth keeping in mind. how much is the total economy? how much of gdp, the actual view of the economy, social security cost this every year. according to a trustee, social security makes up or represents 45% of gross domestic product. that is the entire economic production of this country, 4-5% cost of social security. the trustees estimate that by 2015 that cost will grow to about 6%. it will then level off at about 6% just about as far as the eye

can see, as far as the trustees can predict. i would submit the kiffin of the social security those rules 6% of the economy is a very small price to pay for what it does. the way i see it, social security is a small cost to the u.s. economy, and this is based on estimates that the trustees produce that are very pessimistic because of the way wages have stagnated in recent decades and therefore the way that payroll tax revenues have to detect it. so it is possible that as the economy grows, if we can concentrate on growing the economy instead of finding ways to cut programs and we can afford social security even more. even now 6 percent of the economy, that is not a lot. another thing as of security has going for it is that the public

solidly supports it. i have studied polls going back to the 1970's when criticisms, this major a stylish but criticism of social security really began in this country and the polls are incredibly consistent. people have their doubts about social security based upon the pessimistic reports that they hear. people have incredible loyalty to the system, increasingly because of the fact that they can sense the fact that it is more and more important to them. ..

>> social security is part of this and there is a strong sense among the public. as i mentioned before, there is a retirement crisis brewing in this country, having to do with the class of many of the other parts of the support system that elderly people or older workers have had traditionally. there is more and more of the sense that social security is it. that that is the game and the one thing you'll have to sustain you into retirement you can count on. that is another support. finally, the other positive that social security has, which is the one that i really like to

talk about, i talk about it in my book, is the fact that the movement against social security has a tendency to screw up. one of the most basic things -- attacks that they set themselves in a really amazing paper that was written back in 1983 by the cato institute, called a limited strategy for taking on social security, was that in order to push privatization or any other effort to cut social security is absolutely necessary, according to the cato institute, do not threaten the benefits of current retirees or of older workers who are going to retire very soon. the fact is that the movement against social security violated this over and over again. anytime a proposal to cut or privatized social security is examined closely by progressive, it turns out that they will have to cut in to the benefits of retirees or people who will be

retiring soon, or the numbers just don't work. over and over again, they have touched about rail of attempting to global a plan for people who are retiring in the near future. every time it gets exposed, and they wind up getting upset. that's what happened in 2005, when george bush sold a plan to privatize social security. his 60 chewers in 60 days. current and new retirees would suffer directly. it is impossible for the privatization movement to get around very basic points. that is something we can rely upon over and over again. it is very hard to keep your fingerprints off of it if you

are a right wing republican or a center-right democrat. the question is what needs to be done, or what can we do to make sure that social security survives politically. in spite of all the transformations that i have described, and in spite of the relentless effort to people on the right and center-right to push the dismantlement of social security. number one is raise the cap. as i mentioned before, raise the cap on payroll subject to tax. subject to the payroll tax. it is more equitable, it shifts more of the benefit. it makes the payroll tax system more progressive. it is more the benefit to people who are earning more money and people who have benefited from this low tax regime that the one percentage established over the last 30 years. secondly as americans need a raise. the best way to preserve social security and to make it affordable or keep it affordable in coming decades is to reverse the stagnation of wages, which we have experienced since the

mid- 1970s, for the most part in this country. as americans get a raise, that means more payroll tax revenue. more payroll tax revenue means a more affordable social security system. this is probably the most important thing that we can do to save social security or preserve it in the future. number three is a small but very active and very committed progressive caucus in congress, in spite of the money pressures and inspired of the distancing, there is a very vigorous progressive caucus. they need to be supported, that caucus meets girl. and that is up to anybody who votes and who is concerned with social security. that is a litmus test. that is how you get a more progressive congress. the conversation needs to be shifted back not from whether social security is affordable, it is affordable, to how we can improve it.

for example, there is the social security equity act before congress right now, which would extend benefits to same-sex couples. there is the effort of marriage act, which would accomplish a lot of the same goals. there are efforts going back that have been talked about in congress, going back to the gore campaign, which would be to create caregiver benefits for people who have to take time out from the workforce to raise a child or to care for a aging relative. the united states is just about the only country in the industrialized world that doesn't provide caregiver benefits through its national retirement system. that should change. there should be an integral part of social security. the minimum benefit for people who earn low wages are pretty much their entire career needs to be raised. we need a raise in benefits for just about everybody. 95% of people who participate in social security get less than

$2000 a month from the system. that is not acceptable at a time when social security has become and is becoming the only support for our workers and retirees. it is becoming the only support but you can really rely on if you are an older worker. that number needs to be raised. social security needs to become more generous rather than less generous. these are some moves in the right direction. at the same time, as i argued earlier, social security needs to become more democratic. we need to find a way to start a positive conversation. one of the ways to maintain a positive conversation is to give people -- give the people who participate in the system a voice in running it. the thing that gets lost in the conversation consistently over the last 30 years is that social security is not just a government program. social security is something that we own. because we pay into it and we

receive benefits based on money that we have paid into it. increasingly, rather, in the mid-90s, it was possible for conservatives to open a conversation with the public about private accounts. saying, wouldn't you rather own it yourself, rather than some government bureaucrat. they could do that in the conversation, even though effectively we do own social security already. social security already belongs to us. we need to think creatively about ways to use that. to build on that fact. social security is something that produces tremendous economic wealth. it is the best way -- the best question i will throw out -- is the best way to use the wealth to invest in treasury bonds or everything that the federal government does -- from highways to chana and food stamps and nuclear arsenal to warriors in

the middle east. we have the best use of that money and where should it be used to create a means of investing in and supporting a more sustainable economy. a green economy that can produce wealth and perhaps more decentralized economy at the local level. one that could put people into making some of these decisions. perhaps, again, i throw it out there partly because i see a need. social security, if it's going to maintain loyalty and survive in the long run, for the conversation to be open up and out and for us to be able to think creatively about it, rather than simply thinking about how we will defend it. as it is, it is possible for conservatives to argue that we are the ones thinking creatively and we are the ones thinking about how to update social security for this new investment oriented economy. it can produce wealth for use of it you can participate in the booming stock market.

that doesn't work so well these days. but that has been used over and over again. this idea that we are an investor society and social security should be part of that. that is not an idea that stands up to a lot of scrutiny. but be challenges for us to think about how to make social security something to continue to evolve, and turn it into something that can help reduce the kind of economy that we want. social security doesn't exist in a vacuum. it's not something that happens here in the corner. it is part of the economic system that we have in this country. and we need to think actively about how it can produce the kind of economy that we want. i will just say one final thing. i was up in maine last week. i was hosted by frances perkins center. fdr was one of the key people in developing social security and its early years. one thing that i gleaned from talking about frances perkins put people up there, the early

days of social security, social security, fdr and the people who worked with him -- they never saw social security is something that would be set in stone and would not change over time. it was a work in progress. something that needs to evolve. not to be dismantled, but evolved as the needs of working people, the profile of the working population changes are in as the economy changes as well. i would just close by urging us to stop thinking principally and how we can play more obsessive baseball. and create a social movement that has a positive element to it, as opposed to thinking defensively. i'm going to stop talking and open it up. thank you for coming. [applause]

>> eric, thank you very much. you did justice and it really is a wonderful tori or series of stories about how individuals and social forces came together to win these battles. i recommend it just on the basis of the history and the reporting. it fills every page. as you know, lives for retired americans were social security -- finding out how we can do this on august 14. there are demonstrations. various proposals are on the chopping block again and are at stake. by both democrats and republicans.

even when you look at the polling, which is in favor of social security, you think it would be a defining issue in this election. >> first of all, let me back up and provide a fact that i sometimes mention when i talk about this book. every president of the united states, beginning with jimmy carter and continuing through barack obama, including barack obama, has tried at one time or another to cut, dismantle, or privatize social security. that is a chilling fact. every single one. democrat as well as republican. this question is really well-timed. obama came very close, the summer of last year, to making a deal with john boehner to make significant cuts in the formula that is used to compute social security benefits when people retire. this led to very major cuts, especially for people in their 20s, 30s and 40s today.

social security very much has been on the chopping block in the last couple of years. social security should be a major issue in this campaign, because practically every republican in congress, every member of the tea party, but even more senior ones that have been around a while. practically every republican in congress has been on the record at one time or another, favoring drastic cuts in social security. this has to be -- this has to be a major issue, given the fact that the grand bargain that obama and john boehner tried to make last my summer is bound to come up again. either during the lame duck session ordering the congress. they will try to make social security part of a deal to cut the deficit. it is absolutely essential that what happened last year not be forgotten during this campaign and that people bring it up over

and over again. scrutinizing the records of everybody in congress who have anything to do with that. and to make sure that that issue gets raised during the campaign. i think the answer is yes, social security will be an issue of the campaign. but there is a lot of motivation in washington to try to cover it up. again, keep their fingerprints off. it is up to us, it is up to progressives and people on the left, to make sure that that does not happen. >> [inaudible question] >> thank you.

>> i have two questions come about from an organizational perspective. the first one is that you would talk a little bit more about comment that you made. if and when the progressive movement comes back together, talking about how they come down on this. my second question is getting this in regards to the election, what is the one thing that you can do it as a progressive. the one thing that we can do to make sure that our voices are heard. thank you. >> well, a couple of things i want to say. first of all, is that i don't mean to imply -- imply that social security advocates have been so good at defending it -- that they have not been on the

ball are doing what they need to do. they have been. what they have accomplished is amazing. what i was implying about social movements is that if we want to shift the conversation from a defense of conversation to a positive conversation about how we can make social security work better for us, then we need a social movement. we need these groups come together into a social movement that is active all the time. and not just when social security is threatened, and can entertain ideas about creative ideas about what needs to be done and what needs to be the next stage of the game in the next act in social security's history. if we can do that, we can start inspiring people to not just defend it, but to be working for something that will directly benefit them or improve their lives. in terms of the most important thing we can do during this campaign, it comes down to one word.

this has been consistent throughout the story that i tell it in tremont. this is the word. bird dogging. does everybody know what i mean by that? bird dogging is when you basically get on a candidate and follow him or her every step of the way and continue to bring up the record, continue to bring up -- why don't you support this, why do you not support social security, why have you supported cutting it, why did you vote for this bill, and keep on them. because i think that that is the way that you convince them that they have to back off. it does make a difference. we saw it happen in past campaigns. in 2000 from the campaign for america's future had an amazingly effective pledge campaign. were they asked candidates to sign pledges to protect social security. this idea of getting candidates on the record and confronting him when the record says something otherwise, it is

really key. it involves time and commitment in every congressional district. but believe me, it is very effective. that is my tactical suggestion. >> you know the subject better than anybody. i believe that we must educate people. to know what social security is saying. [inaudible question] and that it has nothing to do with what we normally call

taxis, all right? that is the beef. now, what these guys do is really talk about social security being insecure and not being able to make -- [inaudible question] i would say the president of this country doesn't understand that social security, and we are talking about this, is only the retirement benefit, which is very financially set. it should be financially sound.

>> there is a lot you are saying. i would add one thing. again, it is not -- i would say it's not medicare, per se, that is the problem. it is the structure of the health care system in this country. the affordable care act may help a little more in later years. now, you are absolutely right. and i tried to make this point a little earlier. it is not a government program. it is something that we own. it is something that the government runs as a trust from us who pay into it. that is why the people who run the trust funds are known as trustees. they don't own it, the government doesn't own it, we do. that is something that gets lost because of the structure and because of the confusion that gets generated over the funding mechanism.

you are absolutely right that people need to be educated and us. that is what why it worries me that there is this decisional distance between the people who participate in the program in the and the program itself. because i think that ultimately, people have to understand that people feel that they have to know about something, when they feel that it is something that belongs to them. we need to educate people, and we need to also find some way to give the participants in the program some kind of a more direct say in how it is run. one suggestion is to maybe have some of those trusty speed electric directly by the people. if you pay into social security, you get a vote for the trustees. i want to open up the conversation about that. but you are absolutely right. it is education and getting people to understand what this thing actually is, and what role it actually plays in our lives.

>> [inaudible question] one is thinking about a positive message that we can give and one issue is longevity. something that is a fact of modern civilization -- [inaudible question] it seems to me there is something about her caregiver benefit and well, letting the congress -- the congressional caucus.

[inaudible question] is there any more information on benefits that you can explain? >> i think that you just touched on one that is challenging. we have to combat this image for this kind of idea that has been spread over the last 30 years. there are these greedy geezers are trying to take money and take the seed corn away from the younger generations and spend it all on their gated communities. but there is a wealthy group of elderly people who are somehow the culprits in this whole thing. that is a lie that has been spread for 30 years now. it gets repeated over and over again. i have seen it in office within

the last two or three days. in "the new york times" and "washington post." i think that one of the most important things that we can do is to try to change the conversation to the fact that people are living longer and it is positive. it is something that is good for society and not something that we need to be upset about. there are various ways to deal with this. one thing is to give support. there are efforts being made in some major cities, including new york, to encourage multigenerational households and make it easy -- easier for elderly people to create institutions or cooperative ventures. it can help them to work together and support each other. i think there needs to be support for this kind of thing. and there needs to be -- in other words, there needs to be a renewed commitment to helping elderly people to live independently or in the kind of arrangements that they want. you know, i would just say that

the pioneers documents in the 1970s. we are an aging country. there are creative ways we can handle this. there needs to be, you know, the affordable care act, which includes a series of pilot projects for health care and preventive care and were kind of -- a kind of outcomes or results-based medicine. it is very promising. there need to be pilot projects in terms of community living for the elderly and in terms of how to help multigenerational households. there needs to be a new focus of attention on us. and i think that if we can focus attention on the changing face, not just the fact that people are living longer, but the changing face of it. how people live.

that is one way to create a more positive conversation. >> [inaudible question] >> [inaudible question] [applause] >> thank you for coming. >> we would like to hear from you. tweet viewer feedback. what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. three this summer i want to read the book by robert draper.

it is about an inside look at how he manages the tea party freshman. there are some great lines that we have heard. it shows how crazy we can get in there with a lot of freshmen that are put in my the tea party and arguably are controlling the way that the house is running. even though they are freshmen. there is one line that i have right here. apparently in a meeting with his conference, speaker john boehner told people get your butt in line. and i believe this has been so polarizing and unexpected. a book like this would be great for some summer reading to pick up and figure out some of the dramas that were actually going on behind the scenes as we

watched. another book i would like to read is called "love in a mixed tape." it is a personal story about somebody, about how he fell in love with someone and she fell in love with him. they were a very unlikely pair. from what i understand, she died, and he is devastated. but then they used to make each other mixed tapes. which is something that i did for years to all my ex- boyfriends. he basically writes a book that is essentially a mixed tape to her. in her honor because he loves her and she is gone. it sounds like it is a final mix tape for her with love songs. i can't read it. that is what i'm hoping to read this summer demand for more information on this and other summer reading list, v